Karl Herholz graduated as a medical doctor at the University of Erlangen, Germany, in 1980. After basic general clinical training, he joined the Max-Planck-Institute for Neurological Research in Cologne, Germany, as a research fellow in 1982 and became professor of neurology at the University of Cologne in 1994. He moved to the University of Manchester, UK, in 2005 to become professor in clinical neuroscience and director of the > Wolfson Molecular Imaging Centre.

His research focuses on neuroimaging studies (PET and MRI) of dementia (early diagnosis of dementia in patients with mild cognitive deficits, multicentre studies, impairment of specific transmitter systems and their relevance for cognitive symptoms and distinction of dementing disorders, monitoring of progression, clinical trials in collaboration with pharmaceutical companies) and brain tumours (grading of metabolic activity, detection of progression to higher grade of malignancy, interference with and plasticity of normal brain function, monitoring of therapy, 3D visualization for planning of neurosurgical intervention).

He has been coordinating collaborations on Early Diagnosis of Neurodegenerative Diseases within the EU-funded Network on > Diagnostic Molecular Imaging and was Chief investigator of the EU-funded "Network for Efficiency and Standardisation of Dementia Diagnosis" (NEST-DD) creating a comprehensive clinical and neuroimaging digital database of more than 1000 subjects. He published more than 250 research papers, and received prizes from the Max-Planck-Society and the Hirnliga. He is an active member of many professional societies and of the editorial board of several journals, including the Journal of Nuclear Medicine and the European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging.